LONGMONT -- Five Longmont residents showed up for a Thursday night open house to examine Boulder County's still-under-way efforts to craft a plan for projects and policies that may guide development of the county's transportation system over the next 25 years.

Afterward, Buzz Feldman said of the county's draft Master Transportation Plan: "It'll probably take me 24 hours or so for it to sink in."

But Feldman, a longtime local cycling activist and enthusiast, welcomed the multi-modal nature of the county plan and its attention to bicycling, transit and pedestrians as well as focusing on the need for future road improvements.

Just adding more road and highway lanes to alleviate growth-driven traffic congestion "has been shown time and time again that it doesn't solve our problem," Feldman said.

Ryan Kragerud, president of Bicycle Longmont, said he was interested in Boulder County's efforts to promote the idea of getting people to walk or ride the first or final mile of their commuting trips, and to take the bus for the rest of those trips.

"This helps support the concept of bicycles as transportation," Kragerud said, as well as riding bikes for purely recreational reasons.

Regional Transportation District candidate Jeff Ilseman and his wife, Iris, also attended the county Transportation Department's open house at the Longmont Senior Center, with Ilseman saying afterward that any multi-modal master plan "has to be flexible" in the midst of rapidly changing transportation technologies.

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"We can't spend a lot of money putting in infrastructure that's going to be obsolete in 10, 20 years," Ilseman said. "We don't know what modes are coming down the road."

Ilseman, Cheryl Hauger, Judy Lubow and Seth Patterson are vying for the District I seat on the RTD board that's up for election this year -- a district that extends north from Broomfield into Longmont.

The county staff has said the master plan is intended to identify the programs, services and facilities the county will implement "to help people get where they need to go in a safe, efficient and environmentally sensitive manner." That could include such transportation-system investments as improvements to the county's transportation corridors and its bicycle, pedestrian, transit and road networks.

People who couldn't attend Boulder County's Thursday night transportation plan Longmont open house can view the draft of that document online by going to bouldercounty.org and typing Transportation Master Plan into the search box. People can submit comments on the plan through Oct. 30.

For more information or to submit comments, people can contact county transportation planner Hannah Polow at hpolow@bouldercounty.org or 720-564-2864.

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